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. 2018 May 23;18(1):143.
doi: 10.1186/s12888-018-1719-6.

Health-related quality of life in multiple sclerosis: temperament outweighs EDSS

S Salhofer-Polanyi  1 , F Friedrich  2 , S Löffler  1 , P S Rommer  1 , A Gleiss  3 , R Engelmaier  2 , F Leutmezer  4 , B Vyssoki  2
Affiliations

Health-related quality of life in multiple sclerosis: temperament outweighs EDSS

S Salhofer-Polanyi et al. BMC Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background: The influence of personality on health-related quality of life in patients with multiple sclerosis has been the focus of previous studies showing that introversion and neuroticism were related with reduced health related quality of life. However, no data exist on the impact of temperament on quality of life in this patient group.

Methods: Between April 2014 and March 2016 139 multiple sclerosis patients were recruited from a specialized outpatient clinic of the general hospital of Vienna. Health-related quality of life was measured by "The Multiple Sclerosis International Quality of Life Questionnaire (MusiQol)", temperament by "Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego Questionnaire - Münster version" (briefTEMPS-M), and disability by the "Expanded disability status scale". All patients underwent a diagnostic psychiatric semi-structured interview (MINI).

Results: Known predictors (like disease duration, EDSS, psychiatric co-morbidities, immunomodulatory treatments) explain the proportion of variation in the outcome of MusiQol global index score in 30.9% in multi-variable linear regression analysis. It increased respectively to 40.3, 42.5, and 45.8% if adding the depressive, cyclothymic, or hyperthymic temperament to the list of variables. An increase of depressive and cyclothymic temperament scores significantly reduced global index score of MusiQol (p = 0.005, p = 0.002, respectively), while the hyperthymic temperament significantly raised it (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: In MS patients, the depressive and cyclothymic temperament predict a lower and hyperthymic temperament an increased health-related quality of life, independent of current disability status, immunomodulatory treatments, and affective co-morbidities.

Keywords: Health-related quality of life; Multiple sclerosis; MusiQol; TEMPS; Temperament.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical University of Vienna (EK1715/2013) and all patients gave written informed consent to participate. The study was conducted under the terms and conditions of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Scatter plot and simple regression line depicting the association of MusiQol global index score with each temperament score. Footnote: T: temperament. Regression lines for temperaments (exluding hyperthemic) are based on log of temperament score but shown on original scale
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